World literature, translation, untranslatability

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores the ontological status of world literature and its relationship with translation and untranslatability. It argues that world literature as national literature read, understood and appreciated beyond its linguistic borders requires, accommodates, and encourages intercultural interaction and translation as the catalyzer of new desires, new ideas, new styles, and new meanings in the world. The infinite respect for literary, cultural, and conceptual Otherness that can be derived from the Goethean concept of world literature offers or promises a genuine universalism which preserves the special characteristics of every culture. Untranslatability as a structural problem internal to translation itself as a mode of communication not only ceaselessly poses challenges to translation, but gives rise to interlingual influence and change, contributing to the birth and development of a world literature that enhances exchange, understanding, and respect among different nations, affording each national literature chances to enrich, renew, and rejuvenate itself. Untranslatability, the paper concludes, is not, as some scholars have maintained, an obstacle to world literature, and is in no way incompatible with it.